If you want manhwa like Dungeon Odyssey, start with The Skeleton Soldier Failed to Defend the Dungeon. It's the one pick on this list where the hero lives inside a dungeon and has to keep it standing, which is the whole reason Kim Jin-U's story feels different from the usual raid-and-loot fare. The other six are honest second choices: they share the dungeon-crawler world, not the ownership twist, and we say which is which.
Why Manhwa Like Dungeon Odyssey Are Hard to Find
Dungeon Odyssey (던전 견문록, Dungeon Gyeonmullok) is set after a war between the surface and the underground. Kim Jin-U is one of the "dungeon babies" born with powers and a pull toward the labyrinths, and he spends years ignoring it to work as a guide and look after his family. Then an expedition goes wrong and he ends up as the new owner of a labyrinth. That's the hook: he isn't clearing floors for treasure, he's running one.
Most of the genre goes the other way, so a list like this has two kinds of match. A few series share the inside-the-dungeon job. More share the wider world of towers, gates and floors with their own rules. We'd read them in the order below.
The English edition of Dungeon Odyssey sits on Tapas, where it's past 160 episodes and updates every Sunday. Worth knowing before you buy Ink: Tapas has announced it shuts down on March 31, 2027, and three more picks on this list (Solo Leveling, Second Life Ranker and The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor) read there too. Our Tapas shutdown explainer covers what that means for unlocked episodes.
1. The Skeleton Soldier Failed to Defend the Dungeon
The Skeleton Soldier Failed to Defend the Dungeon (cover via AniList).
This is the closest thing to Dungeon Odyssey's premise in English. The Skeleton Soldier is a weak but loyal guard whose only job is protecting his master, Lady Succubus. Warriors break in and kill them both, and the skeleton wakes up 20 years in the past with no special combat skills and a long record of losing. So the story is about defending a dungeon and the people in it, not raiding someone else's.
It reads on Tappytoon, still releasing, with new episodes every Friday. We'd start here if Jin-U's role as the person responsible for the dungeon is what kept you reading.
2. Solo Leveling
Solo Leveling (cover via AniList).
Fair warning first: Sung Jin-Woo raids dungeons, he doesn't run one. What carries over is the second half, when he stops being a lone hunter and starts commanding an army of shadow soldiers raised from the enemies he beats. That's a power structure built from the inside, just like Jin-U's.
It's also the safest pick here because it's finished: AniList counts 201 chapters, and the English edition on Tapas is marked complete. If you want an ending you can actually reach, read this one.
3. Tower of God
Tower of God (cover via AniList).
Bam climbs a tower from the outside, so this is a world match, not a premise match. The reason it's here is the tower itself: every floor has its own tests, factions and rules, and the politics matter as much as the fights. If the dungeon's internal politics were your favorite part of Dungeon Odyssey, you'll like how much of Tower of God is negotiation.
It's a WEBTOON Original, and on October 24, 2026 the website listed all 652 entries. The English run stopped at the Season 3 finale (Ep. 235, February 2025) with a "will be back" note, so plan on a long series with a pause at the end.
For the full case on why the kingdom-management layer is the reason to read Dungeon Odyssey:
Dungeon Odyssey Review →
4. Second Life Ranker
Second Life Ranker (cover via AniList).
Another tower climb, closer to Tower of God than to Dungeon Odyssey. Yeonwoo learns his missing brother was betrayed inside the Tower of the Sun God, and he climbs it using the knowledge his brother left behind in a pocket watch. Knowing the tower's players before they know you is the link to Jin-U, who also wins by understanding the place better than the people in it. The English edition on Tapas has 219 episodes; Tapas posted in April 2026 that Season 3 had ended and the series is on hiatus until Season 4.
5. Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint
Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (cover via AniList).
ORV (전지적 독자 시점) turns the whole world into a string of scenarios, each with its own rules, and office worker Kim Dokja is the only person who knows how it ends, because it's the plot of his favorite web novel. It's the loosest match on ownership, but it's the best pick here if what you like is a system with real internal logic. On WEBTOON the English run is at Episode 308 and on a season break with a "will return" note.
6. The World After the Fall
The World After the Fall (cover via AniList).
Towers appear, monsters pour out, and Tower Walkers who are about to die can use a regression stone to start over in a separate timeline. Jaehwan refuses and keeps fighting for the original one. It's a tower story, not a dungeon-owner one, but it shares Dungeon Odyssey's habit of making the setting feel dangerous rather than a backdrop for easy power-ups. It's on WEBTOON and still updating weekly; on October 24, 2026 the website's newest was Episode 242 (October 18), and the 10 newest episodes were app-only.
For the wider dungeon and tower genre these picks sit inside:
Best Manhwa Dungeon →
7. The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor
The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor (cover via AniList).
This one is a VR-game adventure, so it's the furthest from Dungeon Odyssey's setup, and the old version of this list oversold it. The English edition on Tapas stopped at 175 episodes with a June 2025 notice saying it's on hiatus "until further notice." Read it only if a game-world grind appeals on its own; skip it if you came for the dungeon.
Our Take on Manhwa Like Dungeon Odyssey
If you want the same job Jin-U has, there's really one answer: Skeleton Soldier. If you want a finished story, Solo Leveling. Every other manhwa like Dungeon Odyssey on this list is a good series that shares the furniture (towers, floors, factions) without the deed to the building.
One thing none of these copy is the jokes. In an r/manhwa thread from October 2025 about a familiar-looking panel, one reader put it simply: "the manhwa has quite a few memes, and this is likely just one of many." Another compared it to The Greatest Estate Developer as one of the few adaptations where "the manhwa changes things and takes liberty in some areas." If the comedy is what you'll miss, that's the series we'd try after Skeleton Soldier, even though it has no dungeon at all.
How We Checked This
For this update we re-checked every status and count above on AniList, Tapas, Tappytoon and WEBTOON, and logged each in our sources table. This pass fixed Tower of God (stopped at the Season 3 finale, not ongoing) and Second Life Ranker (Season 3 ended in April 2026). We removed a novel credit for Skeleton Soldier we couldn't source and added the Tapas closure date, since four of these picks read there in English.
Last reviewed: October 14, 2026
Related Reading
- Dungeon Odyssey Review: our verdict on Kim Jin-U's owner-not-raider premise, if you haven't decided whether to keep going.
- Dungeon Odyssey Reading Guide: where to start and how the arcs are laid out on Tapas.
- Solo Leveling Review: the finished run and how the shadow army changes the second half.
- Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint Manhwa Review: why the scenario system works and where the adaptation pauses.
- Second Life Ranker Review: the revenge-driven tower climb, season by season.
